


Fascination

by Delphi



Series: Snape of St. Brutal's [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Drama, Dubious Consent, M/M, Manipulation, Reform School, Seduction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 01:11:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/Delphi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being made prefect was easy enough, but now there is the matter of what to do with Mr. Filch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fascination

It was a test, Severus decided. Or, if the headmaster rather than Professor McGonagall had been behind the allocation of prefects, perhaps it was a trap. 

Building Monitor was, on its face, the worst of the prefect positions. Severus's first choice had of course been the library, but Athletics Monitor would have been bearable, and at least Kitchen Monitor came with the implied promise of extra food. Yet he was given over to Mr. Filch the caretaker and told that he would be assisting with maintenance and ensuring that curfew was respected.

("Vocational training"—he had heard the magistrate call it that, and now the red crescents around his knuckle were raw from the convulsive grip of his teeth.)

"We are putting a great deal of trust in you, Mr. Snape," Professor McGonagall said. "This is a serious responsibility."

They were letting him at the poisons. The bleach, the ammonia, the arsenic for the mice. It was a test, or a trap. Someone wanted to see what he would do. Someone wanted to see if he could follow the rules, and surely Filch had been ordered to keep an eye out for any missing bottles or suspiciously light tins. There the situation grew interesting, because Severus was not half as tempted by rodenticide as he was by the ring of keys hanging from Filch's belt loop.

Thriving at St. Brutal's entailed more than doing well in class and staying off the magistrate's list. Favours were exchanged among the student body for the sake of social standing, and privileges had to be paid for. One could survive being labelled a boffin, but any whiff of sincere rehabilitation could easily be mistaken for the stench of a rat. Severus could keep himself comfortably in peace, quiet, and fags if he had the ability to leave a door unlocked here or there, or perhaps procure the odd bit of contraband. 

Only, of course, if the caretaker was not going to be a problem.

("Are you going to give me any trouble?"

Severus shook his head, his gaze flitting over stubble, shoulders, buttons, boots. "No, sir.")

He hadn't paid much attention to Filch last term, busy as he was catching up after his stint of freedom. It had taken six months of scrupulous behaviour to ensure his appointment as prefect, although really, a shoplifting charge was child's play as far as breaches of probation went, and even three months without a demerit was practically a qualifier for canonisation. The general impression he had formed was that Filch was sharper than Hagrid, who did the same job in the junior school, and accordingly was nowhere near as cheerful. He shouted often, but did not seem to be charged with much authority beyond reporting students to Professor McGonagall or the magistrate. He left you alone if you were visibly studying, was prone to muttering crossly to himself, and had a particular hatred of vandalism.

Staring up at the ceiling in the darkness, Severus reviewed what he had learned after a week of observing the man more closely.

1\. Filch had a big prick.

He had not had the opportunity to make a full study, but the bulge in Filch's trousers had caught his eye, and now he couldn't stop looking at it. It was interesting. Not as interesting as the keys, but nearly so.

2\. Filch didn't carry a wallet. He kept the key ring affixed to his belt loop at all times. Doors were checked twice each time they were locked.

This was a potential problem. Filch was careful, suspicious, always watching. However, he was _consistently_ careful. In Severus's experience, routine was far easier to exploit than whim. 

3\. Filch didn't write anything down. The diary in the caretaker's office was marked sparingly with symbols that Severus could not yet decipher. There was a ledger of sorts, which proved to be nothing more than a scrapbook of receipts.

("How do you keep track of it?" Severus asked, fishing for some alternative clue to exactly how much money they were talking about. 

Filch tapped his temple. "It's all up here.")

4\. Filch was the owner of the skittish, half-feral cat that was occasionally spotted on the grounds.

Largely useless information, but a long-standing mystery of St. Brutal's solved.

5\. Filch approved of scholastic endeavours.

Usually, people were put off by Severus's intellect, or else they were jealous. Filch, however, had seemed genuinely impressed to hear that Severus was given extra assignments by most of his teachers to keep him busy, and that he was in fact one of only three students taking Advanced Latin. 

("Clever one, ain't you?" Filch said, but not in the way that Severus's father would have.)

6\. Filch was probably a fairy.

This was a hunch more than anything, and Severus was not entirely at home with hunches. Filch didn't stare at him. He had no wedding ring to twist nervously around his finger. His voice wasn't lilting, and there was nothing at all soft about his face. There was something about his eyes, that was all, and maybe he was only lonely, or hard-up, or unhappy, but for Severus's purposes, he supposed it was all the same thing.

"Snape?" 

Severus blinked slowly. "Yes?"

A semi-private room was one of the perquisites of being a prefect. He had been set up in one of the towers, with a rather good view of the lake if you squinted through the iron grille that covered the narrow window. The top bunk was his, and the bottom belonged to Reg Black, who was a special case and needed particular supervision. The details of his offence were as yet unknown, but it was rumoured that he had been transferred from Grimmauld Children's Home, and Severus was inclined to believe it.

"Are you awake?" Black asked.

"Obviously."

Black laughed softly, nervously. His mouth sounded wet. "I was just going to ask—I was just wondering. Do you have a girlfriend?"

"Not at the moment," Severus said. 

"It's only—" Black said, audibly squirming in the bunk below, "—that if you had one, and you were thinking about her, and you wanted to—"

Severus sighed. He really didn't want to have to report him. "That's all right, thank you."

Mercifully, Black shut his mouth. The room returned to the uncomfortable sound of their wakeful breathing. He supposed Black would start wanking soon, and he shut his eyes, hoping to fall asleep before the noise began. If the bunk started rocking, Black might have to be made to sleep on the floor. 

Severus was accustomed to being propositioned. That was to say, he had never done the asking himself. You couldn't at St. Brutal's, not if you really wanted it, because then someone might suspect you were a fairy. Nonetheless, handjobs were as regular and unplanned an occurrence as the rain, and Pettigrew had been the first to offer to suck his prick in exchange for help with an essay, but not altogether the last. Then there was the Hogsmeade Railway Station toilet, and there was Ray Fothergill in Cokeworth, and there was the peculiar expediency of leaning against a wall with his shoulders slouched just so and his lips wrapped around a fag. 

Except: If Filch were in the habit of screwing students, Severus would have heard about it by now.

No one with friends could ever keep a secret around here. Everyone knew, for instance, about Professor Slughorn and his study group. Severus had never attended himself, but he had gleaned that there was alcohol provided and that Slughorn liked to watch, which was enough to dissuade him because he was not interested in drinking or in making a fool of himself in front of an audience. 

("I'll suck you off, if you like," he imagined saying—or maybe he would start with, "Are you married?" because when you took out Black's fish-mouthed stuttering, it wasn't a bad approach. At least if you knew someone probably wasn't.)

In English class, he made a list while Professor Flitwick attempted to engage the slouching back row in scholastic discussion. That was always embarrassing to watch, and so Severus hunched over his desk and wrote in tiny letters in the margin of his lined paper:

1\. Look.  
2\. Stand close.  
3\. Lie.

That was, he had decided, the way it was done in the adult world. He did not have a large enough sample size to draw any scientific conclusions, but he was comfortable calling it a recurring theme.

It always started with a look. A particular sort of look: down and up, with a moment of eye contact. Then they stood close, just a little too close. Close enough that he could smell them (tobacco, tea, maybe shaving lotion in the morning) and feel the brief press of warmth through their shirtsleeves. Then came the lie, which wasn't really a lie because no one was fooled. ("Waiting on a girl?" or "Weren't you on the Aberdeen train?" or "Think you dropped a fiver, son.")

A book went flying past his head and hit the chalkboard. Professor Flitwick let out a squeak of alarm, and Severus looked over his shoulder, glaring mildly at Dolohov—less in authoritative censure and more in annoyance at having been put in the line of fire. Dolohov grinned and then started stomping his feet. A few others joined in, and soon most of the class were banging rhythmically on their desks while Professor Flitwick stuck his head into the hallway and called for help. 

Severus sighed and scribbled out his list, obliterating the words in a shiny layer of lead. 

(Look.)

"What?" Filch asked suddenly, his pale grey eyes narrowing as he caught Severus staring.

It was the first time he tried it. The two of them were alone in the corridor, and Filch was locking up the classrooms for the night. The first curfew bell had rung, and though it wasn't lights-out yet, Severus still felt pleasantly delinquent to be out of his room while everyone else was shut away. His heart was beating a little too loudly, and he was slightly aroused.

He shrugged and then, emboldened, leaned against the wall and let his gaze execute a second up-and-down. 

Filch was not altogether uninteresting to look at. He was a little taller than Severus, and quite a bit broader, with the sort of face that was either plain or ugly depending on what side you looked at him from. He had old-fashioned sideburns, and when he went around without his coat, you could see that his shirt was tight around the shoulders. His hands were big, and his arms were hairy, and Severus still had a very hard time keeping his eyes off the front of his trousers.

The latch on the music room door turned with a loud click, and Filch rattled the knob twice to make sure it was locked. He looked back at Severus—not the same sort of look, but a nervous glance from the corner of his eye. They proceeded on to the music room cupboard and then to the drama room and the English room, each door locked and double-checked.

Filch shoved his hands into his pockets as they reached the end of the hallway and took the stairs up to the second floor. The keys jingled. Climbing swiftly and looking straight ahead, he said under his voice: "See here, you can't go staring like that. Someone'll take it the wrong way."

"What way is that?" Severus asked innocently. He raised his eyebrows in stupid curiosity, but the expression was wasted. 

Filch didn't reply, and he didn't look at Severus again for the rest of the rounds.

(Stand close.)

The job wasn't actually that bad. Schoolwork came first, that was what Filch said, and Severus was released early from his duties most evenings if he could provide proof that he was working on an assignment. Moreover, Filch did not seem to actually trust him with any important task, and as such he had not yet been called upon to unstop a drain or mop up sick. Mostly, he was expected to follow along, open doors when Filch's hands were full, and hand over the appropriate spanner or screwdriver when requested. 

It wasn't hard to impress Filch, and it hadn't taken Severus more than a few tries to memorise the difference between a Flat Head, a Phillips, and a Robertson. To amuse himself, he let his fingers brush against Filch's every time he passed something along. He stood closer than he should have, just to see what Filch would do.

It seemed to him that a man who was wholly opposed to having his prick sucked, or wholly ignorant of the process, would give him a good shove or a smack on the ear. He would elbow him. Snap at him. Laugh. Frown. Instead, Filch only took a half-step away, looking very hard at whatever work he was doing, his face slightly red and his throat making a dry clicking sound as he swallowed.

Nonetheless, it took five days of this treatment before Filch said a word about it. They were in the dungeons, in the laundry room, with the water rushing into a basin and the bubbly, acrid smell of floor cleanser rising up.

"Stop it," Filch said. 

His voice was very low and quiet. He sounded uncertain. 

Severus didn't move, even though his stomach had suddenly clenched tight. His shoulder was pressed against Filch's, and their feet were touching. He could feel the firm muscle of Filch's arm against his own, and below the stink of ammonia he could smell something like sawdust, warm and wholesome. 

He put on an expression of abject idiocy borrowed from certain schoolmates and looked blankly from Filch to his own hands, as if he thought he were being rebuked for touching the basin. The water continued to flow, sending up splatters as the basin filled, and it seemed a clever touch to reach out hesitantly and shut it off. He then looked at Filch as if to say: _Is that what you wanted?_

A long moment passed, and then Filch edged away from him, shaking his head. His face was past red now, nearly purple. 

"Never mind," Filch muttered. "Never mind, just you go on now. I won't be needing you today."

Later, it would occur to Severus that he might have pressed his luck then. The laundry room was warm and dimly lit and far away from everyone else. He could have put his hand on Filch's prick—he could have reached for Filch's zip and wanked him off, and Filch probably would have let him. 

In the moment, however, he only knew that he liked the doubt in Filch's voice. The almost-question-mark at the end of his words, as though he didn't quite know what was real. 

Severus shrugged, his throat suddenly dry with excitement. He left and walked back to his room through the half-dark corridors, stopping at a toilet along the way to wank himself silly.

(Lie.)

He was careful for the next three days. This was a new game, and though he wasn't entirely certain of the rules, he was enjoying it. He played conservatively: looking, but not looking too long. He stood close, but not too close. He talked about his schoolwork, which Filch seemed to like hearing about. 

"I'm making coffee," Filch said abruptly, in a lull following Severus's explanation of why translating Cicero was so complicated.

They were outside the staff room, which turned out to be already locked. Filch opened the door and peered up and down the hallway before stepping inside. 

Severus perked up, catching the furtiveness of the glance. He wondered if Filch was not supposed to be in the staff room, or maybe no one was supposed to be in there after lights-out. He followed him inside, making note of the apparent transgression and filing it away for future reference. The staff room looked different at night. He had been in here before, carrying a message or accompanying a teacher to retrieve some of the more valuable or pointier school supplies that were locked up in the cupboards. It had been slightly illicit then too, to see the teachers talking amongst themselves over tea—to hear snatches of private conversation and his schoolmates' names—but it was even more exciting to be in here when it was empty.

"Can I have some?" Severus asked as Filch took out a percolator. He had never actually had coffee before, but the idea of it was appealing.

Filch glanced at him, seemingly startled, as if he had forgotten Severus was with him. The look held just a little too long, and then he took out a pot and set it on the hotplate alongside the percolator. The little wood-panelled refrigerator was opened, and Filch removed a bottle of milk, which he uncapped and sniffed. 

Severus sat down on the sofa and then, after a moment's consideration, lay down instead. One foot settled on the floor. His other knee bent. He placed one hand on his stomach and thought about the narrow single bed at Ray Fothergill's house, in the room plastered with football posters. They could probably screw on a sofa like this. It wouldn't be comfortable, but it could be managed. 

Filch kept his back to him, working at the hotplate until the bitter smell of coffee filled the room. Two cups were taken down from their pegs. Filch rummaged through the cupboards again, and Severus swallowed hard, feeling like the room was tilting. It was only the shadows, cutting across the walls at sharp angles, but he closed his eyes nonetheless.

"Sit up."

When he opened his eyes again, Filch was standing over him, holding out a cup. He sat up and took it and then gave the contents a sniff. He had a taste, finding it to be nothing more than warm milk sweetened with honey.

"I know a nervous stomach when I see one," Filch said gruffly, sitting down in one of the armchairs with his coffee. 

"Do you?" Severus asked, frowning. His chapped finger burned where it pressed against the cup. He had another sip and decided that it was actually rather good. He had never had hot milk before. It was something people only drank in books.

Filch didn't answer him, looking down into his coffee for a long moment before taking a drink. "Five minutes, then it's back to work."

"All right," Severus said, and then after a moment's thought added: "Thank you."

He watched with interest as Filch's shoulders stiffened.

("Stop it." )

Ah, he thought with sudden understanding. There was the lie.


End file.
